Fiction, Poems/Songs, and Paintings by Rex Sexton

Works of Chicago author and artist Rex Sexton, including his novel Desert Flower, five short stories, poems/songs, and images of 20 of his paintings, plus classic works of fiction by some of his favorite authors (Poe, Dickens, Zola, Hugo, Stevenson, Wilde, Dostoyevsky, Doyle, Hawthorne, and Gogol.)

His fiction introduces you to worlds that outwardly seem familiar, but that operate in accord with their own eerie rules and expectations. Once you get caught up in the characters, reading one of these tales is like watching your own recurrent nightmare -- you can't stop reading, and you'll never forget.

The novel, Desert Flower, should be made into a film. Imagine Elmore Leonard meets Cormac McCarthy meets Louise Erdrich, or imagine Rambo meets Bonnie and Clyde meets Pulp fiction. Mind-blowing action and dazzling use of language.

His paintings typically convey familiar situations and emotions in bizarre and unexpected ways. You'll want to set them up as an album and/or a screen saver to enjoy them repeatedly on your PC.

"When Rex was 18, he died (momentarily). He left his body and traveled to another dimension. This experience changed his life. In his paintings, Rex, now 40, paints 'another kind of reality.' Rex is an original." -- Mac Filman, Gilman/Gruen Galleries in Chicago

Brief autobiography from Rex "I grew up in Chicago, studied in Europe.

"I paint and write fiction, publish illustrated books.

"These art forms intermingle. The paintings tell stories. the fiction is cinematic. Both border on dream, magic, the mystical.

"I learned how to paint from a Holocaust Jew. Dark moods fought a battle in his pallet with his propensity for rainbows. Alex drew wonderful cartoons. I liked them more than his oils, which were lavish, impressionistic, quite wonderful too.

"Chicago meant mean streets, hard times, life on the edge.

"Times change. Chicago is the Gold Coast now -- galleries, bookstores, nightclubs, cafes -- above all Rochelle.

"I paint fate -- dolls who dream, marionettes who emote, toys and puppets with hearts and souls.

"I write nightmares -- autobiographical this time, a novel in progress about my early years in Chi-town."

The books on this CD are in three formats: plain text, Word document, and html. You can copy them onto your hard drive for convenience, or make an archival copy of the CD, as backup in case of damage to the original.

Intended for use with Windows and Linux PCs and recent Macs (OS X), the text files are presented in both plain text and html formats, and are readable with your browser or word processor. The images are in .jpg format.

Rex is represented by Gruen Galleries, 226 W. Superior St., Chicago, IL 312-337-6262. Fax 312-337-7855, lisa@gruengalleries.com, www.gruengalleries.com. Director: Lisa Boron

Works of Rex Sexton Context: Classic Works of Fiction by Authors Selected by Rex

• Dickens
• Dostoyevsky
• Doyle
• Gogol
• Hawthorne
• Hugo
• Lawrence
• Poe
• Stevenson
• Zola

Works of Rex Sexton

• Novel
• Desert Flower -- imagine Leonard Elmore meets Cormac McCarthy meets Louise Erdrich, or imagine Rambo meets Bonnie and Cyde meets Pulp fiction. Mind-blowing action and dazzling use of language.
• plain text
• Word document
• html (for Web browser)
• Short Stories
• Carnival
• plain text
• Word document
• html (for Web browser)
• Cold Rain
• plain text
• Word document
• html (for Web browser)
• Holy Night
• plain text
• Word document
• html (for Web browser)
• I am Alive and I am Real
• plain text
• Word document
• html (for Web browser)
• Paintings
• Blue Note, mixed media collage, 11" x 20" 1999
• Pulp Fiction, mixed media collage, 21" x 20" 1999
• See No Evil, acrylic/paper, 18" x 16" 1999
• Serie Noir, acrylic/paper, 16" x 14" 1998
• Head On Egyptian Pillo, acrylic/paper, 40" x 30" 2002
• Firing Squad, acrylic/paper 40" x 30" 2002
• Lunar Cats, acrylic/paper, 40" x 30" 2002
• Enchanted Cafe", acrylic/paper, 18" x 16" 1998
• Love Song, acrylic/paper, 25" x 31" 1995
• Doll House, mixed media collage, 13" x 10" 1998
• Head Hunters, acylic/board, 25" x 31" 1995
• Neverman, acylic/paper, 20" x 17" 1998
• White Mountain, acrylic/canvas, 36" x 48" 1991
• Tango, acrylic/board, 25" x 31" 1995
• Moon Ladder, acrylic/paper, 10" x 19"
• Woman in Black, mixed media collage, 21" x 27"
• Shaman, acylic/paper 21" x 19" 1998
• Carnival, acrylic/canvas, 36" x 48" 1991
• Heartbreak Hotel, acrylic/paper 40" x 30" 1999
• Menagerie, acrylic/canvas, 27" x 39" 1990
• Poems/Songs
• Blind Alley
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Perdition
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Woman Unknown
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Into the Night
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Night
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• You Were the One
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Nocturne
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Hell Woman
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Let It Go
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Love Ain't Blind
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• In Dream
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• One Lonely Night
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Cold Rain
• plain text
• html (for Web browser)
• Tell Me
• plain text
• html (Web browser)
• Twilight
• plain text
• html (Web browser)
• Woman in White
• plain text
• html (Web browser)
• Echo
• plain text
• html (Web browser)

---

Context -- classic works of fiction by authors selected by Rex

Charles Dickens

• American Notes
• Barnaby Rudge
• The Battle of Life
• Bleak House
• A Child's History of England
• The Chimes
• A Christmas Carol
• Contributions to All the Year Round
• The Cricket on the Hearth
• David Copperfield
• Domby and Son
• Dr. Marigold (short story)
• George Silverman's Explanation (short story)
• Going into Society
• Great Expectations
• Hard Times
• The Haunted Man
• Holiday Romance (short story)
• The Holly-Tree (short story)
• House to Let
• Hunted Down (short story)
• The Lamplighter (short story)
• The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
• Little Dorrit
• Martin Chuzzlewit
• Master Humphrey's Clock
• Message from the Sea (short story)
• Miscellaneous Papers
• Mrs. Liripper's Legacy (short story)
• Mrs. Liripper's Lodgings (short story)
• Mudfog
• Mugby Junction
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Nicholas Nickleby
• No Thoroughfare (co-author with Wilkie Collins)
• The Old Curiosity Shop
• Oliver Twist
• Our Mutual Friend
• The Perils of Certain English Prisoners
• Pickwick Papers
• Pictures from Italy
• Reprinted Pieces
• Seven Poor Travellers (short story)
• Sketches by Boz
• Sketches of Young Couples
• Sketches of Young Gentlemen
• Some Short Christmas Stories
• Somebody's Luggage
• Speeches
• Sunday Under Three Heads (short story)
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Three Ghost Stories
• The Signal-Man
• The Haunted-House
• The Trial For Murder
• To Be Read at Dusk (short story)
• Tom Tiddler's Ground (short story)
• The Uncommercial Traveller
• The Wreck of the Golden Mary (short story)

About Dickens

• Inns and Taverns of Pickwick by B.M. Matz
• The Puzzle of Dickens' Last Plot by Andrew Lang

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

• Crime and Punishment
• The Gambler
• The Grand Inquisitor (excerpt from The Brothers Karamazon), translated by H.P. Blavatsky
• The Idiot
• Notes from the Underground
• Poor Folk
• The Possessed (in html format)

Arthur Conan Doyle

• Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (short story)
• Adventure of the Cardboard Box (short story)
• Adventure of the Devil's Foot (short story)
• Adventure of the Dying Detective (short story)
• Adventures of Gerard
• The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge (short story)
• The Adventure of the Red Circle (short story)
• Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Beyond the City
• The Captain of the Polestar
• The Doings of Raffles Haw
• A Duet
• The Great Boer War
• His Last Bow (short story)
• The Hound of the Baskervilles
• The Last Galley Impressions and Tales
• The Lost World
• Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• The Mystery of Cloomber
• Mystery of Sassa Valley (short story)
• The New Revelation
• The Poison Belt
• The Parasite
• Rodney Stone
• Round the Red Lamp
• The Sign of the Four
• Sir Nigel
• Songs of Action
• The Stark Munro Letters
• Study in Scarlet
• Tales of Terror and Mystery
• Through the Magic Door
• The Valley of Fear
• The Vital Message
• The White Company

Nikolai Gogol

• Dead Souls
• Taras Bulba
• The Inspector General
• St. John's Eve

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• The American Notebooks
• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Ancestral Footstep
• The Blithedale Romance
• The Dolliver Romance
• Fanshawe
• From Mosses from an Old Manse
• The Birthmark
• Young Goodman Brown
• Rappaccini's Daughter
• Mrs. Bullfrog
• The Celestial Railroad
• The Procession of Life
• Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
• Egotism; or, The Bosom Serpent
• Drowne's Wooden Image
• Roger Malvin's Burial
• The Artist of the Beautiful
• The Great Stone Face
• The Great Stone Face
• The Ambitious Guest
• The Great Carbuncle
• Sketches from Memory
• Grimshawe's Secret
• The House of the Seven Gables
• Journal of an African Cruiser by an officer of the US Navy, edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Marble Faun, volume 1
• The Marble Faun, volume 2
• Passages from the American Notebooks
• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Our Old Home: a Series of English Sketches
• Passages from the English Notebooks (2 volumes)
• Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks (2 volumes)
• The Scarlet Letter
• Septimus Felton
• Sketches and Studies
• The Snow Image
• The Snow Image: A Childish Miracle
• The Great Stone Face
• Ethan Brand
• The Canterbury Pilgrims
• The Devil in Manuscript
• My Kinsman, Major Molineux
• Tanglewood Tales
• Twice-Told Tales
• The Gray Champion
• The Wedding Knell
• The Minister's Black Veil
• The May-Pole of Merry Mount
• The Gentle Boy
• Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe
• Wakefield
• The Great Carbuncle
• David Swan
• The Hollow of the Three Hills
• Dr. Heidegger's Experiment
• Legends of the Province House
•   I. Howe's Masquerade
•   II. Edward Randolph's Portrait
•   III. Lady Eleanore's Mantle
•   IV. Old Esther Dudley
• The Ambitious Guest
• Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure
• The Shaker Bridal
• Endicott and the Red Cross
• The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair or True Stories from New England History, 1620-1808
• Grandfather and the Children and the Chair
• The Puritans and the Lady Arbela
• A Rainy Day
• Troublous Times
• The Government of New England
• The Pine-Tree Shillings
• The Quakers and the Indians
• The Indian Bible
• England and New England
• The Sunken Treasure
• What the Chair Had Known
• Extracts from the Life of John Eliot
• The Chair in the Firelight
• The Salem Witches
• The Old-Fashioned School
• Cotton Mather
• The Rejected Blessing
• Pomps and Vanities
• The Provincial Muster
• The Old French War and the Acadian Exiles
• The End of the War
• Thomas Hutchinson
• Account of the deportaion of the Acadians
• A New Year's Day
• The Stamp Act
• The Hutchinson Mob
• The British Troops in Boston
• The Boston Massacre
• A Collection of Portrait
• The Tea Party and Lexington
• The Siege of Boston
• The Tory's Farewell
• The War for Independence.
• Grandfather's Dream
• A Letter from Governor Hutchinson
• about Nathaniel Hawthorne and Brook Farm
• Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs by John Thomas Codman
• Hawthorne and His Circle by Julian Hawthorne
• Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne by Frank Preston Stearns
• Sketches form Concord by Frank Preston Stearns
• Memories of Hawthorne by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
• A Study of Hawthorne by George Lathrop
• My Friends at Brook Farm by Jon Van Der See Sears
• Nathaniel Hawtorne by George E. Woodbury

Victor Hugo

• Memoirs, in English
• Les Miserables, translated to English by Isabel Hapgood
• Notre Dame de Paris (AKA The Hunchback of Notre Dame), in English
• Poems

D.H. Lawrence

• Aaron's Rod
• Sons and Lovers
• Touch and Go (play)
• Women in Love

Edgar Allan Poe

Volume 1 of the Raven Edition of his works

• Edgar Allan Poe, An Appreciation
• Life of Poe, by James Russell Lowell
• Death of Poe, by N. P. Willis
• The Unparalled Adventures of One Hans Pfall
• The Gold Bug
• Four Beasts in One
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue
• The Mystery of Marie Roget
• The Balloon Hoax
• MS. Found in a Bottle
• The Oval Portrait

Volume 2

• The Purloined Letter
• The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade
• A Descent into the Maelström
• Von Kempelen and his Discovery
• Mesmeric Revelation
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
• The Black Cat
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• Silence -- a Fable
• The Masque of the Red Death
• The Cask of Amontillado
• The Imp of the Perverse
• The Island of the Fay
• The Assignation
• The Pit and the Pendulum
• The Premature Burial
• The Domain of Arnheim
• Landor's Cottage
• William Wilson
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• Berenice
• Eleonora

Volume 3

• Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
• Ligeia
• Morella
• A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
• The Spectacles
• King Pest
• Three Sundays in a Week

Volume 4

• The Devil in the Belfry
• Lionizing
• X-ing a Paragrab
• Metzengerstein
• The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
• The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.
• How to Write a Blackwood article
• A Predicament
• Mystification
• Diddling
• The Angel of the Odd
• Mellonia Tauta
• The Duc de l'Omlette
• The Oblong Box
• Loss of Breath
• The Man That Was Used Up
• The Business Man
• The Landscape Garden
• Maelzel's Chess-Player
• The Power of Words
• The Colloquy of Monas and Una
• The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
• Shadow.--A Parable

Volume 5

• Philosophy of Furniture
• A Tale of Jerusalem
• The Sphinx
• Hop Frog
• The Man of the Crowd
• Never Bet the Devill Your Head
• Thou Art the Man
• Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling
• Bon-Bon
• Some words with a Mummy
• The Poetic Principle
• Old English Poetry

Robert Louis Stevenson

• Across the Plains
• The Art of Writing
• The Black Arrow
• Catriona (sequel to Kidnapped)
• The Dynamiter
• The Ebb-Tide
• Edinburgh Picturesque Notes
• Essays of Travel
• Fables
• Familiar Studies of Men and Books
• Father Damien (short story)
• Footnote to History
• In the South Seas
• Inland Voyage
• Island Night's Entertainment
• Kidnapped
• Lay Morals
• Letters
• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Lodging for the Night (short story)
• Markheim (short story)
• Master of Ballantrae
• Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin
• Memories and Portraits
• Merry Men
• New Arabian Nights
• The Suicide Club
• The Rajah's Diamond
• The Pavilion on the Links
• A Lodging for the Night - a Story of Francis Villon
• The Sire de Maletroit's Door
• Providence and the Guitar
• Pavilion on the Links
• Plays by W.E. Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson
• Deacon Brodie
• Beau Austin
• Admiral Guinea
• Robert Macaire
• The Pocket RLS (favorite passages from the works of Stevenson)
• Prince Otto
• Records of a Family of Engineers
• St. Ives
• The Sea Fogs (short)
• Silverado Squatters
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Tales and Fantasies
• Thrawn Janet
• Travels with a Donkey
• Treasure Island
• Underwoods (short story)
• Vailima Letters
• Virginibus Puerisque
• Weir of Hermiston
• The Wrecker (co-author with Osbourne)
• The Wrong Box

About Robert Louis Stevenson

• Robert Louis Stevenson by A.H. Japp
• Robert Louis Stevenson by Sir Walter Raleigh

Oscar Wilde

• De Profundis
• The Duchess of Padua
• Essays and Lectures
• The Happy Prince and Other Tales
• A House of Pomegranates
• An Ideal Husband
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• Lady Windermere's Fan
• Intentions
• Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
• Miscellaneous
• A Florentine Tragedy--A Fragment
• La Sainte Courtisane--A Fragment
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Salome
• Selected Prose
• Shorter Prose Pieces
• The Soul of Man
• A Woman of No Importance

About Oscar Wilde

• Oscar Life -- His Life and Confessions Volume 1 by Frank Harris

Emile Zola

• L'Assomoir
• Captain Burle (short story)
• The Death of Olivier Becaille (short story)
• The Fat and the Thin
• The Flood
• The Fortune of the Rougons
• The Miller's Daughter (short story)
• Nana
• Therese Raquin
• Three Cities
• Rome
• Lourdes

about Emile Zola:

• Emile Zola by William Dean Howells
• A Zola Dictionary by J. G. Paterson

"Talking" software included on this book CD:

Text-to-voice conversion software can allow you to hear as well as read these books. So you can test this capability and decide if it might be valuable to you, we include the include the installation file for ReadPlease 2003 on this CD. (NB -- This version of the software is intended for Windows PCS, not Macs.) You can use that file to install a trial copy of ReadPlease Plus, which is a commercial-quality product and can read files of any size. This trial copy is good for 30 days, after which, if you wish, you could buy a license from ReadPlease for $49.95. As an alternative, you can use that same file to install their free version, which doesn't expire, but which can only handle 16K of text at a time; which means that to read a book, you would have to copy and paste one peice of text after another.

When the rapid, automatic 10 Mbyte installation is done, you will be able to open ReadPlease by clicking on an icon on your desktop. Controls in the right column allow you to change the speed of the voice (with a sliding bar), change the font size (with a sliding bar), and switch among four different voices (with the right and left arrows.

When you run ReadPlease, you see the text, with yellow highlighting moving from one word to the next, while you hear that same text. And you can at any time edit the text in the video window. Just position your cursor, click you mouse, and tuype whatever you like -- for instance, annotation or marks to show where you last stopped reading. Then save the edited file on your hard drive.

Please keep in mind that ReadPlease is their software not ours. They are the experts on it. You can listen to samples at their site www.readplease.com, where you can also see detailed help files.